April 8, 2009

Get Satisfaction 101

A lot has happened since we launched Get Satisfaction in September 2007, but one thing that has remained remarkably steadfast is our vision. In fact, we’re always amazed when we look back at design sketches from the early brainstorming days at how much of our product and philosophy was clear to us then. Over the last two years Lane, Amy and I have elaborated at length about our big ideas, joined by a chorus of many others, but it’s easy to forget that most of the visitors to our site have little idea about what makes us tick. Since our service is in the midst of some big changes, with many more to come, this seems like a great time to re-introduce our mission.

For starters, there’s a little mantra we have at Get Satisfaction: the more we empower customers the more that good companies thrive. It seems to us like this idea is taking off in a big way. Smart organizations are now jumping at the chance to give their customers a loud voice in their affairs, and help connect them with each other to spark new kinds of social value around their products. We’re thrilled to be partnering with so many of them in this effort.

At the same time, some of the most productive customer communities are those where the company is only marginally involved, or isn’t involved at all. Famously independent communities like TivoCommunity and Mini2 have been as productive and beneficial to their associated brands as any company-sponsored community. Apple products have spawned dozens of unofficial communities in addition to its official one. Over and over we’ve seen that engaged customers can be as capable as organizations at forging meaningful connections around the products they love. Everyday, people are transforming organizations from the outside-in.

Because of this, we reject the false choice between people-powered customer support and company-centered support. In fact, we see them as two sides of the same coin.

Once upon a time, branding meant maintaining control over all the places that customers interact with it, whether that was the telephone, Web, print, or events. If the brand sponsored an online community it was with the overriding concern of preserving a “safe brand experience.” This necessarily meant corporate censorship, and it meant the forum was so marginalized even people inside the company might not know it existed.

But the world looks a lot different today. Companies as diverse as Comcast, H&R Block, Whole Foods, Timbuk2 and countless smaller companies are building their brands by engaging outside of the safety zone. Organizations are increasingly going to where their customers are, to services like Twitter, Facebook and yes, Get Satisfaction. Heck, it’s so prevalent I even get Twitter replies from the San Francisco Zoo staff when i take my kids there. We’re seeing the emergence of community spaces and tools that serve the *relationships* between people inside and outside of the company, where each side has the tools and the accountability to do right by each other. This may once have been an overly idealistic notion, but it is fantastically with us today, and it is changing the world.

…

Still, there aren’t many businesses that are exactly parallel to Get Satisfaction. The service is a hybrid of consumer social networking and business software-as-a-service. As a result, people can sometimes draw the wrong conclusions about how it works. Here’s a brief Q&A:

Q. Why is Get Satisfaction creating all these community spaces around other brands?
A. The vast majority are added by employees of these organizations, and the rest are added by customers themselves in the course of seeking a way to be heard and get support results. An upcoming version of each community overview page will actually link to the person who added the organization to GS. We do not add organizations to the system in bulk.

Q. Are organizations coerced into participating? What if they already have a community or support site?
A. They are under no obligation or duress to participate. In fact, we give every organization free tools to point visitors to their preferred support channels, as well as set a featured message of their choice to any users that visit the site. In addition, we no longer display advertising on any of our free support community pages.

Q. Can organizations remove themselves completely from GS?
A. They may request a removal if there are no customer interactions, but we allow users to add it back if they wish to establish customer-to-customer community. We’re rolling out a feature that will allow a company to state clearly that they have “opted out” of participating, so they will not be contacted by us again.

Q. GS Community pages often appear above the organization’s own web site in Google search results. Isn’t this brand hijacking?
A. While we’re proud that search engines rank our pages highly, we have no direct control over the position that our pages appear. More importantly, we have absolutely no desire to create confusion in the minds of users. We are continually refining our design and copy to be clearer and more effective at expressing the purpose of our site, and our relationship to the organizations people are discussing. We’re open to feedback on this, too: drop us a note.

As always, the best way to get to the top of Google is to do a good job being a member of the web community, having clear, concise, and well-architected web pages, and supporting your users to the best of your ability.

Q. Do you contact organizations when they’ve been added by a customer?
A. We sometimes will reach out to organizations that have a lot of activity around them. However, thanks to Google Alerts and other buzz monitoring tools employees usually discover the activity before we have the chance to connect. One problem with reaching out to companies is that many of them do not publish contact details, and the ones they do publish do not always lead to a response. It’s this fact that often drives people to express themselves on Get Satisfaction. We help customers and organizations meet in the middle!

That wraps up Get Satisfaction 101. We are always on, and eager to hear from you. Make your comment below or op on over to our community and let us know what you think. That’s what it’s all about.

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By Thor Muller | Posted in new rules, philosophy | Comments (7)
November 18, 2008

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

Earlier this month, Google announced a revamp of their help forums.

The good folks at ReadWriteWeb quickly noticed that the new service behaves an awful lot like Get Satisfaction. Aww shucks! We’re really flattered … but more important, we’re happy for all the users who are going to get great support from the new system.

If I try to do some mind reading for a moment, I have a feeling that the scalability-obsessed GoogleBot realized two things:

1. No matter how often you update your FAQs, or how well your search algorithm works, the machine can’t always answer users’ questions. It’s a “long-tail” problem, with the tail being defined by how rapidly the knowledge base needs to change.

2. Forums (or Google Groups, in this case) are just too uncontrollable and chaotic to effectively crowd-source customer support, and the answers — if they are there — are just too hard to find. It’s a structural problem that can’t be solved without an “outcomes orientation” built into the system.

These are problems that Get Satisfaction began solving more than a year ago, so here’s the part where we shamelessly market ourselves: If you have a company that wants to provide high-touch, highly scalable customer support while keeping costs low — then be like Google and use our service.

It’s great to see the Googlers jumping on the customer-service bandwagon!

By dscotthirsch | Posted in Satisfaction, Uncategorized, innovation, new rules, web 2.0 | Comments (0)
February 11, 2008

Introducing the Company-Customer Pact

When we were putting the speaker list together for our Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit, we were laser-focused on the practical. We rounded up speakers like Tony from Zappos and Robert from The Geek Squad to talk about specific actions they took to make their company customer-oriented, so attendees would be able to learn from or even emulate those steps and achieve equally effective results.

But along the way we realized that anecdotal evidence — even solid, practical, billion-dollars-a-year-in-revenue evidence — while a strong start, just wasn’t enough. And so we asked ourselves: How can we help evolve the conversation that companies and customers are having? What can we bring to the table that will help these companies communicate better — more effectively, more honestly, more transparently — with their customers? What hasn’t been said but needs to be?

With this goal in mind, we launched at the Summit an essentially open source document we’re calling, simply, The Company-Customer Pact.

This pact is a call for shared responsibility between companies & customers — one that promises that both sides will hold up their end of the bargain to change the game. The document provides a way to opt into a set of shared values. It’s a balanced statement of responsibilities for companies and customers.

You might wonder why we need this, as it seems like common sense. But if common sense were enough more people would be employing these principles now. We’ve been trained by the bad habits of corporate culture to turn away from the anger of alienated customers reacting to an environment where it’s common place for companies to hide behind phone trees, avoid fault, and employ anonymous and in-human call centers that makes them hard if not impossible to reach. Or by engaging in practices like price-gauging and issuing confusing bills and policies.

And what’s the customers response to this, now that, thanks to the tubes that power the Internet, the customers can respond? More often than not it’s revolt, whether led by one man’s descent into Dell Hell or an entire (digg)nation rising up to defend their right to recite a seemingly random string of letters and numbers. But revolt, as any Frenchman from the 18th century will tell you, while thrilling, isn’t particularly pleasant, and it’s definitely not sustainable. We need another way.

Previous attempts at such documents usually end up coming from the company side as a “Consumer’s Bill of Rights,” the most notable of which was put forth by JFK in a speech he gave in 1962. (Never heard of it? Yeah, neither had we.) A customer bill of rights is a start, but that’s unilateral disarmament. This pact is bilateral disarmament; both sides holster their flamethrowers and try to work it out.

The central thesis of the Company-Customer Pact is that at some point we are all working on behalf of a company, and at the same time we are all customers. We all spend time on either side of that fence, and we should take our understanding of each of those roles into whatever situation we’re in. In that regard, while this Company-Customer Pact speaks to two sides, it’s really speaking to one side — the human side.

Customers can expect more from a company that’s signed onto this document. And whie it’s impossible for a company to tell its customers how to behave, they can certainly ask, and by opting into a pact like this they can imply a sense of shared responsibility with their customers. And a statement like this can even give a company’s internal teams some guiding principles for their behavior.

This is an open initiative — a living document. We want your feedback, which is why we’ve posted it on a wiki where anyone can comment or edit. Keep in mind, though, that one of the goals is to have it be simple enough that anyone can adopt it. It contains five basic tenets:

1. The first point reiterates, because it can’t be said enough, the golden rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

2. The second point warms against the temptation to anonymity, because more often than not, in commercial settings anonymous often gives license to be rude.

3. The third point reflects the fact that we all know in advance that mistakes wil be made and that problems are going to happen — to err is human, after all, and we’re both humans on either side of the line. We can embrace this as an opportunity to deal honestly with problems as they arise; done right, this is where lasting customer relationships are forged. Who hasn’t had the experience of seeing a company turn a bad situation around, creating a tremendous amount of customer loyalty?

4. The fourth point is about companies embracing the opportunity of instant, always-on communication. Now that it’s easier than ever before to get the word out to hundreds of our friends and co-workers, it’s somehow harder than ever to communicate with some of the companies we do business with. There is absolutely a mandate to make honest and direct communication between companies and customers as easy and frictionless as it is with the people you friend on Facebook.

5. Finally, it’s vital to show follow-through and to support those who are trying to follow through. It’s a new world, and we all have to live in it together, so let’s cut each other some slack, ok?

Pretty simple all said and done, but also potentially very powerful. If you haven’t done so yet, check it out at ccpact.com and add your name — as a customer, as a company representative, or as both. We’d love to have you take part in the conversation.

By Lane Becker | Posted in community, new rules, open source, philosophy | Comments (2)
December 11, 2007

It’s the transparency, stupid

For over a month some of the most heated issues on Get Satisfaction have been around Facebook and its enforcement policies. Many people have reported the same thing: a sudden disabling of their accounts, no substantive information about why they’ve been blacklisted, and no process for redress. More recently, people have begun posting their email correspondence with Facebook, showing the same generic form response to every inquiry. Throughout this crush of communication from users here on Get Satisfaction the company itself has remained silent.

Satisfaction is a neutral party in all this: our goal is to help customers and companies communicate better with one another. In most cases this just means providing a better platform for everyone to talk. In this Facebook issue, we’ve gone a step further by stirring the pot on behalf of the frustrated users, culminating in a heads up I sent to TechCrunch.

This isn’t because we think the company’s basic policies are wrong. In all likelihood they’re in the best interest of their core community, and we’re all for enforcing standards of behavior in online communities. We do it all the time here. However, we are and will always be tireless in advocating for open communication between companies and their customers because this is how long-term, trusted relationships are built. In this case, Facebook’s “opaqueness,” as TechCrunch describes it, is creating real alienation amongst users. We think there’s a lesson here for all companies.

We’re not so naive that we think that a company like Facebook can or should reveal everything about its internal systems, nor discuss private issues regarding individual accounts out in the open. But by reinforcing the image of itself as an impenetrable fortress, where all communication is allowed only on its terms, Facebook sends the message that it’s afraid of its own users. Now granted, some of its users may in fact be dangerous (and we’ve met a few that fit that bill, certainly), but for the rest of us who are investing in Facebook with our time we should expect more. Facebook should be speaking to us in a human voice, tell us where they’re coming from, listen attentively when we want to share, and sometimes engage with us on our terms. Because businesses depend on the goodwill of their users to make things work, they need us to build their business.

The goodhearted, hardworking customer service team at Facebook doesn’t deserve to be villainized for doing what it takes to keep their delicate business running smoothly. But it is time that companies recognize that there are hard costs incurred when they choose to only present a closed, institutional public face.

How much more productive would it be if Facebook posted a response in Satisfaction that helps people understand the company’s actions better? Perhaps something like this:

“Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to share their experiences here. It helps those of us here at Facebook to understand how we can do a better job, and we are deeply sorry when we make mistakes that inconvenience our users. Please know that we’re working overtime to protect the fun, safe environment that we’re known for. Consequently, when it comes to our terms of use we generally err on the side of enforcement, but we are careful to review each case if users appeal the action (by sending a note to appeals@facebook.com). This can take some time, of course, and we appreciate your patience if you find yourself in this position. We have every interest in getting non-offending users back into their accounts as quickly as possible.

Finally, we will try harder to communicate more frequently here about the ongoing changes we’re making to improve your experience. Even if things don’t always work perfectly we’re committed to working with you over time to make Facebook all it can be. Once again, thanks for caring enough to express yourself about Facebook!”

In the meantime, we here at Satisfaction continue to welcome Facebook’s participation in the discussion.

By Thor Muller | Posted in Satisfaction, case studies, customer service, new rules, reputation | Comments (0)
June 5, 2007

Customer Service is CTRL+Z for the real world

We all make mistakes. Great customer service is like the CTRL+Z for real life, or Apple+Z for us mac users.

I’ve had three really remarkable customer service experiences this past month. The companies could have refused me service saying that it was simply my mistake: Losing my wallet, showing up for a concert on the wrong day and an application error that led to a misprint on a business card. Instead they did something better.

In all three cases the companies responded with information, help, and forgiveness. A Zipcar employee helped me get back my lost wallet and then even asked me if there was anything else he could do. When I tried to exchange tickets at a concert, Doug behind the desk, helped me understand why it wasn’t possible (even though he really wanted to) and how to make sure I’d have that option the next time. MOO Cards reprinted new cards with no questions asked, no returns required and at no charge.

I know that working on a customer service application makes me more aware of…well…customer service, but it’s also making me more aware of the cases of exemplary service. In the past I only noticed the bad examples. Nowadays, those good examples stand out because I can see what principles are guiding the actions that lead to great experiences. I can connect the dots.

Too often we’re just left frustrated with bad experiences. It can be hard to explain why it was so bad or how it can be better. Hopefully we can stop saying “that sucked” and start saying “that would have been better if they had shared more information” or “that would have been better if they had tried to understand my intentions”. We can change customer service if we have a direction.

It’s my hope that the principles of the conversation-centric approach to customer service enabled by Satisfaction will extend back out to the offline world. Unlike the cold efficiency of the phone tree which seems to have rubbed off on so many in-store service departments, Satisfaction might have a positive transformative effect online AND offline. A return to humanity in customer service through the influence of an online example. This is the kind of web app I’m excited to be building.

-Leslie

By leslie | Posted in customer service, new rules, philosophy | Comments (11)